


The Cold Grey Light of Dawn

by IamShadow21



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, POV First Person, POV Remus Lupin, Parenthood, Remus-centric - Freeform, Werewolf Biology, Werewolf Culture, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-06
Updated: 2007-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-01 20:15:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus has to deal with the consequences of his actions the morning after uncovering Pettigrew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cold Grey Light of Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU fic, based late in PoA, taken from a 'what if?' plot bunny I woke up with a few days ago and couldn't get out of my head.

Pain.

Dust and dirt and blood on the air, and pain in every limb and pore and follicle.

Throat cracked and dry from screaming, skin smarting as though scoured with a wire brush. 

Grief.

Grief and anger and self-loathing that would have me howling and flinging myself at the walls again, if I had the energy to stand. An agonised moan escapes my lips, a wordless plea that last night was a fever dream, a nightmare that will dissipate like mist in the light of the sun.

There is the shuffle of a footstep on the floor behind me, and a voice speaks my name. “Remus?”

I wait for rough hands to grab me, restrain me, hurt me. Instead, the soft weight of a cloak is draped over my naked body and I feel a surge of irritation at the kindness.

“Just send in the Aurors,” I snap. “Take me to Azkaban. The Dementors, the Kiss. That butcher Macnair. Whatever the Ministry’s chosen method of disposal is this week.”

I feel Dumbledore’s hand gently squeeze my shoulder, and it’s too much to bear. “Don’t,” I choke out. “Just get it over with, please.”

“Remus, how much do you remember?” he asks.

_A growl rumbling deep in my chest…the form of a dog on the ground at my feet, whimpering…the boy, stinking of fear, stepping into my line of sight, wand pointed at me, shouting, “Here!”_

_The leap, his spell cast too late, my teeth sinking in to the soft flesh of his shoulder._

_His scream of pain, and the warm, sweet rush of blood in my mouth._

“Too much,” I say miserably. “And very little.”

“Poppy says that Harry will live,” he says quietly.

“Better I had killed him.”

“Do you really believe that?” Dumbledore asks me sharply.

“It doesn’t matter what I believe,” I retort angrily. “It won’t change what he _is_. What I did. What he will become the next time the moon is full.”

“No. Nothing can change that. And the sooner you accept that what’s done is done, the sooner you can help him.”

The bitter laugh that bursts from my lips surprises even me, as I sit up on the dirty floor, wrapping the cloak around my shoulders. “ _Help_ him? After _this?!_ ”

“Arrangements will have to be made,” Dumbledore continues. “As much as I am loath to do it, in light of these events, Harry cannot return to his aunt and uncle. He must remain in the Magical world with a guardian who understands him and his condition.”

“No,” I say forcefully. “Absolutely not.”

“He needs you, Remus,” Dumbledore insists, his face grave and serious. “Would you have him go through his first Change alone?”

The words are a knife to my heart. Though the Change is always brutal, painful and traumatic, the initial Change of a newly infected werewolf is singularly vicious, as bone, muscle and tendon are torn and reshaped for the first time. “No,” I whisper.

Pale, thin bars of light are now creeping through the boarded windows of the shack. Dumbledore pulls a thin wad of fabric from an inner pocket, which with a light tap of his wand he transfigures into a set of robes.

“You should go to the Hospital Wing,” he says, handing me the clothing. “You have injuries that need tending to, and I think that Harry will want you to be there when he wakes.”

**************************************

The second I limp through the door, I can sense it, smell it. It’s only faint now, but with every passing moment it will get stronger, until it’s unmistakable to anyone of my kind. The scent of _another_.

My eyes are instantly drawn to the bed that holds the child. His face is chalky pale; the dark hair and red lips are shocking in contrast. I freeze for a long moment, just studying Harry, shocked at the surge of emotion that overwhelms me. A possessiveness. _Mine_.

It isn’t until Sirius shifts slightly in his chair that I see him beside the bed. 

“You look like hell,” he says, by way of a greeting. Coming from him, it’s pretty rich. He’s painfully thin, has at least a dozen half-healed cuts and bruises on his visible skin alone and one arm in a sling. He’s somehow managing to look elegant in many-times-washed striped pyjamas that are too short for him. He’s also passably clean and his hair is damp and fluffy, cut off raggedly at shoulder-length.

Sirius seems a little bashful under my appraising eye, and self-consciously brushes back a lock from his face. “She wouldn’t let me near Harry until she healed me, and she wouldn’t heal me until I bathed,” he explains.

“I should think not. You stank,” I reply before I can help myself, slipping into the old pattern of banter without thought. “Your arm?” I ask.

He shrugs his good shoulder, seemingly unconcerned. “Only dislocated. They popped it back in before they moved me. It’ll be fine in an hour.” He gives me a crooked smile. “You fight dirty, by the way.”

I try to smile back but fail miserably. I look down at the sleeping child in the bed. “What if he…?”

“He’ll make it,” Sirius says.

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do,” he says with utter conviction. I must look doubtful, because he continues. “Moony, I _know_. I know because I saw what he did last night.” He looks at me hard, before echoing Dumbledore’s question from when I awoke. “What do you remember?”

I can’t take my eyes off Harry; the gentle rise and fall of the bedclothes with his breath. “I remember biting him. I remember the taste of his blood in my mouth.” I shudder with a very human revulsion at the pleasure I recall, the ecstasy that was so close to arousal. I disgust myself. Words force themselves out through my numb lips. “I wanted to kill him. How did I not kill him?”

“The girl,” Sirius says. “The clever one.”

“Hermione?”

“Yes. She hit you with a Full Body Bind the moment after you latched on to Harry.”

“But that shouldn’t have been enough to-”

Another smile. “It wasn’t. But it slowed you down enough that she had time to throw _Incarcerous_ a second later. You weren’t too happy, but it held until she stunned you right between the eyes.”

“I think I’m going to have to give her full marks in my class this year,” I say a little faintly.

“Might be safest,” he agreed.

“And Peter? How…?”

“She got to him before she got to you. He’d already transformed, so the Body Bind hit him pretty hard. Once she had you under control and Harry was back on his feet, she stunned Wormtail too, shoved him in her pocket and sealed it shut.”

“Once Har… _Harry got back on his feet?_ ”

Sirius nods, his eyes bright. “Saved all of us. You, me, the girl, that other boy…even that ungrateful bastard Snape and…and Wormtail.” His face is haunted. “The Dementors started swarming…they’d smelt me, heard me…I don’t know, maybe they were just drawn to the fight. I couldn’t run to lead them off. I couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t even focus enough to change back, because of the pain.”

Sirius looks down at Harry, emotions warring on his face. “He told the girl to run for help. Then he stood there over me, his wand in his left hand, bleeding like you wouldn’t believe, and conjured the brightest Patronus I’ve ever seen. It…it was a _stag_ , Moony.”

Sirius’s voice is choked, but no tears are tracing his cheeks. “It was a stag, and he conjured it for Merlin only knows how long. When the first spasms hit, he dropped to his knees, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t stop until that phoenix of Dumbledore’s turned up and sang, and they all seemed to drift away like smoke.”

I feel myself sway, my balance unsteady. Sirius is beside me all of a sudden, his body close, his good arm supporting me. “Bloody idiot,” he murmurs affectionately. “Letting me yap away while you’re passing out on your feet. Sit down before you fall down,” he says, pushing me into the chair that’s still warm from his body. 

I’m very close to Harry now, and I imagine I can hear the blood pulsing through his veins. His organs will have undergone subtle changes already. By the time the transition is complete, his heart will have grown almost half again in size and his resting pulse will have slowed to a lazy tap. The lungs, though not larger, will become more powerful and efficient, and allow him to hold his breath for minutes at a time. His digestive tract will be modifying itself for the consumption of raw meat, and his tastes will alter enough that close to the full moon he will crave it. 

And then there are those tiny changes, the ones that mean more than the bigger ones. His body temperature will rise by one to two degrees, speeding the chain of reactions within him and making him stronger, letting him heal faster, heightening his senses and his reflexes. The ducts and glands that produce the hormones and chemicals essential for the Change and unique to the werewolf are in a state of conversion and evolution too, like the enlarging adrenal gland, without which the Change would be fatal, and his sweat glands, responsible for the production of the pheromone I sensed the moment I walked in the room. 

“It’s not your fault,” says Sirius gently, from his perch on the edge of the bed.

“I didn’t take my potion,” I snap. “I left the security of my rooms in a mad dash, forgetting all those things I promised I never would, and in doing so almost killed the boy I was trying to protect and nearly killed you.”

“You’re forgetting that he tried to throw his life away stepping in to save _my_ skin. Shouldn’t I be the one pleading guilty here?”

“I had a _responsibility_ , Sirius-”

“Oh, responsibility be damned!” he snarls. “Sometimes things just _happen_ , Remus, and there’s nothing to be done about it!”

“I’ve given him a lifelong curse to deal with. You don’t think I should feel _some_ measure of guilt for that? His father would never have forgiven me.”

“ _James?_ ” Sirius gives a short bark of incredulous laughter. “James Potter, who did almost the same equally stupid and heroic thing when he was only a few years older than Harry? If anything, this is _his_ fault for passing on those suicidally noble genes. You think that _James_ , of all people, would have blamed you for _this?_ ”

“ _My_ fault…” says a wisp of a voice from the pillows, “…was stupid.”

“You’re bloody right it was,” snaps Sirius, though the edge fades from his voice. “What in the name of Godric’s hairy arse did you think you were doing? I’m not worth it. You should have run when I told you to run.”

Harry isn’t listening. Though when his eyes opened they focussed on Sirius’s face, his head has turned sharply in my direction. “I can _smell_ you,” he whispers, with a kind of awe in his voice.

“Now who needs a bath, Moony?” Sirius quips to the empty air. 

“I can smell you, too,” I reply, my eyes burning into Harry’s.

“What’s…?” the bewildered Sirius begins.

Harry tilts his head to expose his neck, submitting to me instinctively. I struggle to my feet and lean over him, placing one hand flat in the centre of his chest, pinning him firmly to the bed. The other I run over the rumpled mop of hair and down to cup his cheek. Harry shuts his eyes and nuzzles into it, trusting me. I again feel that jealous sense of ownership. _Cub. Pack. Mine._

“Oh. Right. Werewolf thing,” Sirius concludes, shuffling off the bed and taking a couple of steps back, allowing us space.

A few moments more and it’s over as quickly as it began. I resume my seat, and Sirius tentatively sits down again, though he makes no sudden movements and stays near Harry’s feet.

“Oh, don’t be so ridiculous, Padfoot,” I say impatiently, but with some measure of humour. “I’m not going to bite you.”

“Are you sure?” Sirius asks, and there’s no joking in his voice. “You looked…” He pauses for a long moment, then just looks down at his lap and shakes his head. Whatever he saw in my face, he doesn’t seem to be able to find the words to describe it. 

“I’m sure.” I pat the bed next to me, close to Harry. “Here.”

Sirius settles down between the two of us, his back against the headboard, his long legs stretched out on top of the sheets. “So, are you going to hold me down and stroke me, as well?” he asks with an air of lightness, to cover his shaken nerves.

“Jealous, Pads?” I ask immediately.

“Absolutely,” he replies. “You nearly killed me, too. I deserve a little groping for my trouble.”

“Stroking is hardly groping.”

“Twelve years in prison. I’ll take whatever’s on offer.”

“Still not choosy, then?”

“I am _very_ discerning in my tastes, Moony,” Sirius says, feigning offence. “I only accept propositions from werewolves who have recently made violent attempts on my life. It leaves my dance card rather empty, I’m afraid, but it does make _you_ a very lucky man.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Harry, who up until now has been watching this exchange with an expression of curious amusement, suddenly hisses sharply.

“Are you in pain?” I ask quickly. Harry nods, a grimace contorting his face.

“He had a potion only two hours ago,” Sirius murmurs, his brow furrowed in concern. “I watched him take it.”

“His metabolism is speeding up,” I sigh. “Soon even the strongest draughts will only take the edge off. Sleep right now would be best. Something potent, that can keep him under during the worst of the transition.”

Sirius looks pale and slightly sick. “I’ll get Madam Pomfrey,” he says, standing as quickly as his injured body will allow. “She told me to wake her if…if he needed her.”

I move to the place vacated by Sirius. Harry’s eyes are bright with pain and fear. “Hurts,” he whimpers, sounding so much younger than his nearly fourteen years. “Does it always hurt?”

“Yes,” I say, knowing lies and placation will not make the reality any easier. “The first Change will be the hardest,” I tell him, smoothing the hair back from his damp brow. “But the Changes themselves are quick. Only a matter of moments and the worst of the pain subsides.”

Harry clenches his jaw, whether in pain or resignation I am unsure. Perhaps both.

“It’s alright to be afraid,” I say gently. “But in many ways, to Change is like facing a Dementor. If you go into one dwelling on your fear, it will turn that fear against you. You have to make an effort to hold on to your happiest memories, as difficult as that may be.”

Harry bites his lip as another wave crashes over him, but he nods. A moment later, Poppy bustles up in her nightgown and begins passing her wand over Harry with professional efficiency. Sirius hovers behind her nervously, clutching a small potion bottle with the air of someone desperately grateful to be doing something, _anything_ , no matter how small.

“Things seem to be progressing as they should,” she eventually pronounces. “No tingling in your fingers or toes?” Harry shakes his head. “You don’t hear any voices other than my own?” Another shake. Poppy gives a satisfied nod, and gestures Sirius forward. “It’s a sleeping draught, Potter. I can’t give you any more pain relief until midday; you’ve had too much already. Make sure you drink it all, or you’ll wake up far too soon.” 

She briskly pulls me off the bed and back into the chair, running her wand over me, her mouth set in a grim line. “And how long did you plan on sitting there, bleeding, before you thought to ask for help?”

“It’s not long past dawn, Poppy-” I begin, in an attempt to placate.

“It’s half an hour past dawn, and twice that since moon-set,” she snaps, healing a deep gash on my forearm. “You should have come straight to me. This will scar now, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

I could point out that it’s just one new, red mark amongst hundreds of older ones that cover me in a fine mesh of silver lines, but it doesn’t seem a moment for humour. Not when her eyes are red-rimmed with more than exhaustion.

“He’s asleep,” Sirius murmurs.

“And so should you be, too, Black!” Poppy retorts and Sirius has the decency to look guilty. “Didn’t I tell you, not an hour ago, to go to bed and rest or I’d hold you down and dose you myself?”

Sirius edges past her and slides beneath the sheets of the next bed over without argument. Poppy turns her sharp gaze on me. 

“I’m not going to bed,” I state calmly. When she opens her mouth to scold me, I continue. “Bring me a blanket if you must, but I’m not leaving this chair. If I sleep, I’ll sleep sitting upright.”

Poppy huffs indignantly, but she leaves me alone to check on her other patients.

“Why’d she let you get away with it and not me?” Sirius asks sulkily from where he’s curled into a tight ball under the covers of his bed.

“Because you’re an idiot and you don’t have anywhere near my charm,” I respond lazily, allowing my eyes to close. “Shut up and sleep, Pads, or I’ll hex you.”

Sirius mutters a colourful obscenity, followed by what sounds suspiciously like “…don’t even have your wand.” 

I flap a hand in his direction without looking, sending a very mild Stinging Hex his way that causes him to give a little yelp. “ _Goodnight_ , Padfoot,” I growl.

“Bastard,” he replies, but he subsides. 

Less than a minute later when Poppy returns with a blanket for me, his breathing is already deep and even.

*********************************

I do sleep, but fitfully, waking several times to soothe Harry when a vicious spasm of pain disturbs his rest, and once to calm Sirius when he is seized by a violent nightmare which he refuses to speak of. Instead he gulps the Dreamless Sleep Draught Poppy offers him as if trying to drown himself with it, and drifts back into unconsciousness clinging to my hand so hard it hurts me.

When anyone comes too near Harry’s bed my eyes snap open; a primitive instinct to guard him overriding my body’s need for rest. It is no different when Dumbledore sits himself down near Harry’s feet. I watch him for several moments before I realise he’s looking at my hand, which is still enmeshed with Sirius’s, though his grip has slackened.

“What will happen to Sirius?” I ask quietly, without preamble.

“No doubt there will have to be a hearing to officially overturn his conviction, but since the Aurors took Pettigrew away and left Sirius behind, unaccompanied, at Harry’s bedside, I believe he is safe for now.”

I give Sirius’s hand a gentle squeeze, knowing it will not wake him. Since taking the potion he hadn’t moved, apart from the almost-too-slow in-and-out of his breath. Were it not for that steady rhythm I might have felt the need, long before now, to check if he were still alive.

“I am here to ask if you have given any further thought to the matter we discussed this morning,” he continues.

“I’m too dangerous,” I protest, half-heartedly. “I’m a werewolf.”

“As is he,” he counters, reasonably.

“An _unemployed_ werewolf, who knows nothing about being a parent,” I snap, beginning to lose my patience, all the while knowing I’m fighting a losing battle.

“A werewolf employed as my Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, who has an excellent way with the students he teaches,” he says firmly.

To say that I am stunned by his words would be an understatement. “ _What?_ ” I gape. “ _But_ …but I…”

Dumbledore’s eyes are twinkling over his half-moon glasses at me.

“…the Ministry…I _attacked_ …” I finish weakly.

“Ah, yes,” says Dumbledore, looking satisfied, but also somehow grim at the same time. “The Ministry has been fully informed, of course, of how Harry and several others were injured apprehending the turncoat Peter Pettigrew. Pettigrew has naturally made a full confession, in particular detailing his liberal use of the _Sectumsempra_ curse against Harry and Sirius Black when he realised he was outnumbered.”

I blink in surprise and realisation. “You’re keeping him off the Registry.”

Dumbledore nods once. “The attitude at the Ministry at the moment towards those like yourself is far from amicable. Though Harry is by no means the first werewolf, or the last, that I hope to educate here at Hogwarts, should the Ministry learn of his condition I doubt their reaction would be an understanding one. It is imperative that Harry continues his education if he is to be ready for what lies ahead.”

“But surely I _can’t_ …legally…I…” I take a deep breath and compose myself. “I wasn’t allowed be Harry’s godfather. James and Lily wanted the three of us. Peter didn’t want to. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. Because of what I am.”

“It wouldn’t be an official arrangement, no,” Dumbledore conceded. “Sirius has already offered to fill the role of legal guardian, but I think he will be in as much need of support as Harry for a considerable period. I’m sure you would agree that Azkaban has left him in no fit state to be a true parent at this time.”

I don’t reply for a long moment. Instead, I study Harry. Right now, his features are slack in drugged sleep rather than contorted with pain. “He suffers because of me,” I say heavily, my guilt a millstone in my chest.

“He suffers, as we all suffer, because of the actions of Voldemort and those who choose to follow him, as Pettigrew did.”

“I don’t know if I can bear it,” I say dully. “Watching him Change.”

“It will be a difficult thing, but the Wolfsbane Potion will ease the transformation, for both of you.”

A mirthless smile creases my face. “I doubt my salary could stretch to covering _one_ dose of Wolfsbane per month, even if I lived as frugally as possible and survived on bread and water, let alone two.”

“Severus will continue to brew the Wolfsbane Potion for as long as you and Harry remain teacher and student at this school, and beyond, if the situation calls for it.”

My eyebrows rise again. “I can’t imagine that he _volunteered_ this. Not after last night. And not out of love for Harry.”

“He was…reluctant,” Dumbledore agrees, tactfully. “But he knows what the Change will do to Harry if he is left to suffer it untempered, and also the great risk of exposure of his condition should you try to obtain the Wolfsbane from another potioneer. Whatever Severus’s feelings towards Harry or yourself, he has agreed that this is the only safe course of action.”

“He was furious, then,” I conclude.

“I think the mention by the Minister for Magic of the possibility of an Order of Merlin for his role in Peter’s capture mollified him somewhat.”

I can’t help but give a little snort.

“Severus aside,” Dumbledore continues, “I should hope that if the situation ever arose where you needed to acquire Wolfsbane from another source, you would not hesitate to allow Harry or Sirius to pay for it, if you were unable to. To best care for a child, sometimes their interests must be placed before our own pride.”

“I know,” I answer softly.

Harry stirs and makes a little noise, but it’s not a sound of pain, just the gentle sigh of a child lost in dreams. Sunlight is flooding the windows, and I know from the time that’s past and the sensitivity of my nose that Harry is now as much a werewolf as I am. 

I also know that the insistent _mine_ that has thrummed through me like a second pulse since I laid eyes on him at dawn has bypassed my indecision and my very human guilt. Harry is now my child, as much as he is James and Lily’s. Maybe even more so. And when I turn my eyes again to Dumbledore, he reads it in my face.

“I’m proud of you, Remus,” he says with a kind smile, before leaving me. I close my eyes again and follow my closest friend and my new son into the realm of sleep.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [In the Hospital Wing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117954) by [IamShadow21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IamShadow21/pseuds/IamShadow21)




End file.
